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Europeans Work To Live andAmericans Live To Work
(Who is Happy to Work More: Americans or Europeans?)Adam Okulicz-Kozaryn
∗
Institute for Quantitative Social Science, Harvard University
Final Version, Forthcoming in the Journal of Happiness Studies
Abstract
This paper compares the working hours and life satisfaction of Americans and Eu-ropeans using the World Values Survey, Eurobarometer and General Social Survey.The purpose is to explore the relationship between working hours and happiness inEurope and America. Previous research on the topic does not test the premise thatworking more makes Americans happier than Europeans. The ﬁndings suggest thatAmericans may be happier working more because they believe more than Europeansdo that hard work is associated with success.
keywords: Life Satisfaction, Working Hours, Europe, USA
Introduction
Americans work 50% more than the Germans, the French and the Italians (Prescott, 2004).Explanations about this phenomenon generally fall into one of two groups: economic andcultural.According to Prescott (2004), Americans work more than Europeans because of do-
mestic tax rates; tax rates aﬀect labor supply (assuming it is not ﬁxed). There are lowertax rates in the US than in Europe, and hence working more pays oﬀ more in the US.Michelacci and Pijoan-Mas (2007a,b) posit that U.S. job inequality leads to within-skill
wage diﬀerences that provide incentives to work longer hours. In Europe these incentivesare not that strong. Essentially, the market return on observed skills is much higher inthe US than in Europe (Michelacci and Pijoan-Mas, 2007b). In addition, Alesina et al.
∗
EMAIL: adam.okulicz.kozaryn@gmail.com I am indebted to Micah Altman and Ben Gaddis. Allmistakes are mine.
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(2004) argue that opportunities for social mobility are (or are perceived to be) higher inthe US than in Europe. In other words, working longer hours does (or appears to) payoﬀ more in the US than in Europe. The ﬁnal economic explanation is that working hoursdiﬀerential is due to unionization and labor regulations (Wharton, 2006, Alesina et al.,
2005). European workers are far more unionized than their American counterparts.Cultural explanations mostly refer to protestant ethic (Weber et al., 2003) It is nottrue that protestant ethic is similar in Europe and in the US. Ferguson (2003) argues that
the protestant ethic is dying in Europe and alive and well in the U.S. Americans maybe more concerned with status (American dream), whereas Europeans may value leisuremore (Wharton, 2006, Frijters and Leigh, 2008, Benahold, 2004).
This paper argues that Europeans are happier to work less than Americans
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. Aneconomic truism is that people do things to maximize their utility. Americans maximizetheir utility (happiness) by working and Europeans maximize their utility through leisure.The relationship between working hours and happiness is shown in Figure 1. In short,working less makes Europeans more happy than Americans. This is a new idea proposedin this paper and tested empirically
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.
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Note that happiness means general life satisfaction or happiness, not job satisfaction. The focus hereis on the life satisfaction literature and modeling.
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The goal of this paper is to document a relationship between working hours and happiness in theUS and Europe. A more theoretical account has been provided elsewhere, see Alesina et al. (2005) for
instance.
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2 . 1 2 . 1 5 2 . 2 2 . 2 5 2 . 3 h a p p y
<17 17−34 35−39 40 41−49 50−59 60−160working hours categoryAmericans Europeans
Figure 1:
Happiness by working hours categories in the U.S and Europe. Data are de-scribed in Data Description section.
Life Satisfaction Literature, A Brief Overview
The literature oﬀers insights into the determinants of life satisfaction
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. Myers (2000)
summarizes happiness research done in psychology. Personal characteristics (e.g., extro-version) and culture (e.g., aﬄuent societies with political rights) impact life satisfaction.The most important predictor, however, is social capital (Putnam, 2001). The “need tobelong”, which can be satisﬁed in multiple ways, can seriously aﬀect happiness. Religion,friendship and marriage also boost life satisfaction because they provide social capital(Putnam, 2001). Married people are happier than never married, divorced or separated
(Myers and Diener, 1995). Age and gender do not correlate strongly with life satisfaction(Myers, 2000). Older people have a closer ﬁt between their ideals and self perceptionscompared to the young (Diener et al., 1999), and some ﬁnd a U-shaped correlation be-tween age and happiness, with a minimum around age of 30 (Oswald, 1997), or 45 (Sanfey
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Life satisfaction and happiness are conceptually diﬀerent. The former refers to cognition while thelatter refers to aﬀect. For simplicity I use them interchangeably and speciﬁcally I mean life satisfaction.
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and Teksoz, 2005). The correlation between education and life satisfaction is higher for
individuals with low income and in poorer nations; education may help to satisfy aspira-tions, but it might also elevate aspirations (Diener et al., 1999). Personal or household
income matters more in poor countries (with GNP less than $8,000 per person) (Dieneret al., 1999). As long as people can aﬀord necessities, income does not contribute muchto happiness (Myers, 2000). Thereafter leisure activities become an important predictor
(Diener et al., 1999).
Complementing this work by psychologists, a new branch in economics has developed.The economics of happiness began with Easterlin’s (1974) seminal paper
Does Economic Growth Improve the Human Lot?
In this and subsequent works (1995, 2001, 2003, 2005),
Easterlin argues that the happiness function comprises aspirations and achievements.People have aspirations that they try to satisfy. Once aspirations are satisﬁed, happinessshould follow. However, new achievements result in new aspirations, because through theprocess of hedonic adaptation people adapt to new circumstances. Therefore, happinessis positively correlated with income but negatively correlated with unrealized aspirations.The two inﬂuences cancel out.While the life satisfaction literature is substantial, there is a dearth of research aboutthe relationship of working hours and happiness. Golden and Wiens-Tuers (2006) and
Clark and Senik (2006) address this relationship to some extent. Job satisfaction varies
across occupations and overtime work hours are generally associated with dissatisfaction.However, Golden and Wiens-Tuers (2006) analyze only the US data and only with respect
to extra working hours; Clark and Senik (2006) analyze only French and British data with
respect to wage, but not working hours. Clearly, there is a lack of cross national researchon the eﬀect of working hours on happiness and this paper is a ﬁrst attempt at ﬁllingthis gap. This study is an attempt at understanding working hours diﬀerences betweenEurope and America. Results show that working longer hours makes Americans happierthan Europeans.4

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